Rice Business Plan Competition

TriFusion Devices from Texas A&M University emerged as the top startup company in the Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) Saturday at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. The annual event is the world’s richest and largest student startup competition.

Selected by 275 judges from the investment sector as representing the best investment opportunity and taking home nearly $400,000 in cash and prizes, TriFusion Devices bested 41 other competitors hailing from some of the world’s top universities. TriFusion Devices offers breakthrough 3-D printed products and services aimed at revolutionizing the health care and sports-equipment industries in powerful and profitable ways.

2nd Place: Neurable, University of Michigan

$40,000 second-place prize and $280,000 Owl Investment Prize. The second-place prize was awarded by one of the sponsors of the first RBPC in 2001, Finger Interests. It was increased from $15,000 to $40,000 in memory of Jerry Finger by the Anderson Family Fund and the Greater Houston Community Foundation.

Neurable has created the first noninvasive brain-computer interface that allows for real-time control of physical objects and software.

Bold Diagnostics is an early stage Northwestern University startup that is developing the future of blood-pressure monitoring with an innovative platform. The company’s patent-pending technology is currently being validated through a 150-person preclinical study at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

5th Place: Oncolinx, Dartmouth College

Oncolinx, Dartmouth College -- fifth place and more than $100,000 in individual prizes, including one of the $100,000 TiE RBPC Angel Investment prizes and 5th place Shell Technology Venture prize.

Oncolinx is developing targeted cancer therapies that both destroy the tumor and activate immunological memory to improve patient response durability.

6th Place: MDAR Technologies, Northwestern University

MDAR has developed a 3-D vision system that eliminates the trade-offs of existing technologies, thereby enabling a new wave of robotics.